he result of which has been to
call forth his powers of industry, of energy, of self-reliance, and to
sharpen his intellectual faculties generally. In addition to exercising
and strengthening these personal attributes, the climatic influences of
what has been called the zone of civilisation have brought man's social
characteristics more fully and elaborately into play. The nature of
these influences has forced him to cooperate more or less closely with
his fellows; while each step in the path of cooperation has involved
him in another of a more complex kind. The growth of social cooperation
is not necessarily accompanied by a corresponding development of the
moral sentiments; increased cooperation in some cases involving a
distinct ethical loss. In many directions, however, highly organised
societies tend to evolve loftier types of morality; and it is in
harmony with the facts to say that the highest moral types are not to
be found where nature does most or where it does least in the way of
providing food and shelter for man.

[12] Ratzel. _Voelkerkunde_, i. 20.

It is also interesting to observe the effect which climate, through the
agency of religion, has had upon human conduct. One of the main factors
in the origin of religion is the feeling of dependence upon nature so
strongly manifested in all primitive forms of faith. The outcome of
this feeling of dependence was to exalt the forces of nature into
divinities, and man's conception of these divinities, shaped as it was
by the attitude of nature around him, had an incalculable influence on
his life and actions. The remains of this influence are still visible
in the aesthetic effects which the forces and operations of nature
produce on civilised man; in all other respects it has to a large
extent passed away.[13]

[13] Darwin says that in elaborating his theory of Natural
Selection he attributed too little to external surroundings.
_Life and Letters_.

We have now touched upon most of the ways in which external
surroundings have had a hand in shaping the course of human life in the
past; it will be our next business to inquire whether these
surroundings have any effect upon human conduct at the present day, and
especially upon those manifestations of conduct which are known as
crimes. That they still have an effect is an opinion which has long
been entertained.

Going back to the ancient Greeks, we find Hippocrates holding that all
regions liab